January 25th, 2018

So Nate today continues talking about the school’s latest bully and it’s a doozy. Since Batiuk has no idea what bullying on social media entails and has no desire to learn, he instead has Tank Wedgeman kick it old school with physical bullying more in line with what he was used to decades ago. Of course. He also doesn’t show bullying itself or show Nate doing anything about it, instead just showing Nate talking about it.

And Nate gets worse when he describes the types of abuse Wedgeman visits on his victims and, from all appearances, seems to be not the least bit troubled. Jesus man, a swirly involves Wedgeman jamming a kid’s head in a fucking toilet, and yet Nate’s acting as if this is no big deal. It just comes with the territory. What a guy.

Meanwhile, Linda acts as nothing more than a filibuster-enabler by prompting Nate’s jabbering whenever he needs it. By the way, notice how she hugs that lone blue book to her chest in every panel this entire week. What could that book possibly be?

Nate and Linda, useless as ever.

Today’s strip shows Nate and the ubiquitous Linda walking along a corridor in the high school. Batiuk apparently decided he needed another bully, and since he had to graduate Wedgeman with the dopesy twins Owen and Cody, he came up with a new one. To no one’s surprise, it’s the brother of his previous bully, and would you look at that, he’s a football player as well. Let no one suggest that Batiuk ever exhausts the possibilities he has before him.

The severely parted Linda isn’t actually concerned about what happened to the victims of Tank’s bullying, because they’re not important. What’s important is to indicate that there’s a new bully in town and have Nate make a completely nonsensical reference to a cliche as wordplay. It’s actually in insult to wordplay. It should be called wordloitering instead.

Jelloponically Blown

Today’s strip continues this week’s dumb one-off jokefest by having Logan Church join Progressively-Lumpier Black Guy and Preschooler Bernie Silver. Batiuk shows his lack of range by putting Logan in the now Westview woman uniform colors of magenta and black. Make her vest a cardigan and she’s stolen the elderly Holly’s wardrobe.

Anyway, dumb joke about mandarin oranges and Jello, which, for the record, I have only seen together sparingly in my many years on this planet, and none of those times in a school cafeteria. That Lumpy finishes Bernie’s punchline only underscores how labored this joke is.

And one wonders why Logan, who was introduced as savvy enough to have a business blog “picked up by ABC News”, would be hanging out with these two goobers. Perhaps her status nosedived when she switched her ethnicity.

Brown bag it, dumbasses

Today’s strip shows Batiuk at his most daring – a strip about how cafeteria food is terrible! Who else but Batiuk would have the fortitude to take on this controversial, multitudinous topic?

Anyway, he blows it by having the cafeteria lady herself refer to the slop in front of Bernie and the random lumpy black guy who hangs around with Bernie as “Mystery Meat”, “Cafeteria Cod” and “Leftover Drum Rolls”. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of Bernie and Lumpy commenting on it, doesn’t it?

“What are you serving for lunch?”

“Something terrible.”

“Wow, you’re serving something terrible for lunch.”